Analysis
If patents stifle software innovation, what do Europeans and Asians get that Americans don't?
08Oct12

Joff Wild
Having discovered, rather belatedly, a few weeks ago that there is an evolving market for patents out there, the New York Times has returned to the subject again with a long article entitled The Patent, Used as a Sword. It’s actually a very good, well-balanced piece and certainly worth the time it will take to read it. You will not agree with...

Want to read more?

Register to access two of our subscriber-only articles per month

Subscribe for unlimited access to articles, in-depth analysis and research from the IAM experts

What our customers are saying

Very impressed. Clear, usable insights into the business of IP, and particularly awareness of new strategic IP concepts and tools. I also find it effective for helping frame IP issues with clients and benchmarking to IAM best practice examples. Compares well with the LES journal, and both together cover a broad and thorough toolkit for any IP-centric businessperson.

Sectors

Comments

RE: If patents stifle software innovation, what do Europeans and Asians get that Americans don't?

Blaming software patents for the woes of the US patent system has been standard practice for nearly 20 years. In the 1990s when software patents became easier to obtain with less reference to legal fictions, critics complained that these new patents would shut down software developers, especially smaller ones. Some organizations manned the barricades as lovers of freedom and therefore opponents of software patents, and over the years they have never conceded that any software patent could possibly be valid. As time rolled on, the forecasts about the horrific future morphed into the present tense, and every litigated tech patent was surely a software patent and surely invalid and surely an impingement on freedom. Of course, there may be a problem with patents, especially in the US, but software patenting has little to do with it. The problem essentially boils down to a procedural system that favors “the determined” and has limited abilities during examination to declare a binding and permanent “no,” coupled with a limited bureaucratic capacity for retrospectively reviewing its own work product. It might come as a surprise, for example, but we are apparently living in “the antenna revolution” – to name one non-software subject area. US filings for IPC class H01Q – aerials – from 1978-2000 (22 years) – 7,958 patents. H01Q filings since 2000 (11+ years) – 13,269 patents – that’s a 3-fold increase in annual grants of antenna patents since 2000. The anti-software crowd may characterize these antenna patents as somehow software in nature, but a more likely characterization is that as patent filings accelerated, so did patent grants – without anyone questioning how closely related patent filings should be to patent grants. The US maintains the world's most intricate and expensive system for adjudicating patent disputes, and the patents entering this system should be of a corresponding gravitas.

Thomas Ewing, Awa AB on 10 Oct 2012 @ 16:33

RE: If patents stifle software innovation, what do Europeans and Asians get that Americans don't?

The New York Times article was a really interesting read, but what was particularly fascinating was the aside about litigation vs. innovation spend. It seems to be the trend that major companies are spending more of their IP budget on offensive litigious tactics rather than on innovation and new product development, and this may prove to be a significant deterrent to new, smaller inventors who are trying to enter the relevant market.

Our company, Metis Partners, has recently put up a blog on the subject if you're interested in the topic: http://metispartners.typepad.com/the-musings-of-metis/2012/11/ip-budgets.html